How we pick

One seat: a founder with more ideas than hours. That rules out anything priced per seat for a team you don't have, and anything that needs a sales call before you can see a number.

• Every price read off the vendor's own page. Last pass 2026-08-21.
• Free tier means day 31, not a trial.
• We say where the price cliff is.
• Open source and self-hosting get credit. Being able to leave is worth something.
• 55 of 126 tools here are built by one person or a tiny team. That's deliberate.

The labels

• Our pick, what we'd set up on a Monday morning. Only where we have a real opinion; most categories have none yet.
• Promoted, the vendor pays a monthly fee to sit near the top. Always labelled, never our pick.
• No badge, it's on the table on merit, ranked by price and what founders rate it.

Current picks

• Post Scheduling → Postiz
• Grow on X → SuperX
• Content Creation → no pick yet
• Email Marketing → no pick yet
• SEO → Outrank
• Data Analytics → DataFast
• Website Building → no pick yet
• Workflow Automation → no pick yet
• App Store Optimisation → no pick yet

Money never buys a placement, disclosure.